This blog is for libertarians who are mainly of the voluntaryist, laissez-faire, and anarchistic and agorist variety and who want to sound off on their thoughts on issues of the day as well as politics, current events, and other liberty-oriented projects of interest. This blog is pro-liberty, anti-state, anti-war, and pro-free market.

Krueger, when asked by Cavuto whether this was really a bail-out, went so far as to say that it was not a bail-out, but rather "an investment in mortgages that will get repaid to the government." Gee, what a nice play on words there, Senator!

The state's nonsensical logic has never amazed me, but if there's one thing that has amazed me about these tyrannical stooges, it's that they never give up without a fight.

According to Sunday's edition of the Oregonian, two middle school boys were arrested for purportedly running down the hall of their school and slapping the buttocks of two 13-year-old girls -- an act that is largely viewed as a common form of greeting. According to the paper, such an act is "against school policy in McMinneville Public Schools." Considering this is a violation of public "government" school policy, the seventh grade boys, according to the article, were sent to "the office, where the vice principal and a police officer stationed at the school soon interrogated them."

But here's the eerie thing about this incident that people should find out. Read this paragraph, and you'll see my meaning:

the office, where the vice principal and a police officer stationed at the school soon interrogated them.

But here's an interesting twist to this incident that no one's been able to learn before:

Last year, in a previously undisclosed prosecution, he charged two other Patton Middle School boys with felony sex abuse for repeatedly slapping the bottom of a female student. Both pleaded guilty to harassment, which is a misdemeanor. Berry declined to discuss his cases against Mashburn and Cornelison.

Think about it. A similar incident like this has happened before, and the vile, diabolical prosecutor refuses to comment on that particular incident.

But this is where it gets REALLY interesting. Read this one part here, and you'll get my drift:

The outlines of the case have been known. But confidential police reports and juvenile court records shed new light on the context of the boys' actions. The records show that other students, boys and girls, were slapping one another's bottoms. Two of the girls identified as victims have recanted, saying they felt pressured and gave false statements to interrogators.

In other words, these two boys weren't the only ones who were slapping the girls on their buttocks. The other two girls (who happen to be 13, by the way) were the doing the exact same thing, yet only the two boys -- Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison -- have been charged with committing a sexual crime. Gee, a double standard here, don't you think?

This is what happens when you get the state involved in matters such as education, parental control and responsibility, and juvenile behavior. It also explains why teenagers who are growing from the age of 13 to well beyond their adult years are being treated like children and not as adults by their parents and the government. The sex registry system, even though it was designed to protect little children from sexual predators and pedophiles, has metastasized into a government-sanctioned, government-protected industry, in which individuals who would normally not be charged with "deviant sexual crimes" and other arbitrary crimes under the old judicial system prior to the enactment of the SRS will and must be charged with these crimes under the new judicial system. It has basically encouraged parents to abdicate their responsibility as far as protecting their children from true, dangerous predators and enabled the state to have complete control and care over the lives of the parents' children and raise them according to its perverted values.

Let's be clear about something: a child has been defined by medical and psychological groups as one who, according to the Free Dictionary, "between birth and puberty," or one, according to Wikipedia.org, "has not reached puberty, but also refers to offspring of any age." That would correctly apply to children who age from the time and day they are born (as infants) to the age of 11. An adolescent, or teenager, has been defined by the medical and psychological establishment as one who has, according to Wikipedia.org, transitioned between the stages of childhood and adulthood. A teenager is a young individual who is competent and capable of making adult decisions on his or her own. It goes without saying that teenagers often do and will make mistakes, but it's better for them to make mistakes and learn from them than to protect them from the world in which they live and the vices that are a part of that world.

Worse, teens are usually treated like children, even though their minds and bodies convince them otherwise. Dr. Robert Epstein, the former editor of Psychology Today, even illustrates this in his new book The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen, in which he explains that teens are far more competent than they are or have been portrayed and they are capable of making adult decisions in their early years. He even argues that age of consent laws and child labor laws are part and parcel of the problem that involves our youth, which keep teenagers unemployed and trapped in that childlike mindset that society, parents, and government at all levels insist that they remain as such.

If anything, what happened to these two middle school boys shows that, when you have a government involved in prevention of sexual activity between teenagers or teens and adults, you create more problems than you've bargained for. Once you open the political Pandora's Box, it's almost impossible to fix the problem as long as those who want the vile system remain in control of it.

Rather than undermining parents' obligations to protect their children and their abilities to educate their teenage children, the state would be wise to leave parents and their children to their own devices and work out their problems their own way. With that said, it's time to abolish the sex registry system and all other laws that prevent teens from making adult decisions. But let's go further than that: it's time to get the government out of the lives of parents and children and the schools to which these parents send their kids.

A new ABC News-Washington Post poll, which breaks down Bush's approval ratings and tracks them from February 25, 2001 to July 21, 2007, shows that Americans are entirely dissatisfied with Bush's handling of his job as president.

Here's an excerpt of the poll questions and the results that are shown on the site:

1. Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president? Do you approve/disapprove strongly or somewhat?

As for Bush's handling of the War in Iraq, the war on terrorism, and ethics in government, the poll also found the following:

2. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bush is handling (ITEM)?

7/21/07 - Summary Table*

Approve Disapprove No opiniona. The situation in Iraq 31 68 1b. The US campaign against terrorism 43 56 2 c. Ethics in government 31 65 4

So much for the conservatives and neoconservatives' claim that the "liberal media" is terribly biased, given that the government media is leaking out the truth about how many Americans are disillusioned with the entire political process.

At least Ron Paul is revving things up for the public as well as many disenfranchised voters.

These collectivistic, social engineering-worshipping ignoramuses are trying to snooker the public into thinking that a can of soda that has NO sugar and with some flavoring to make it taste like a regular soda is somehow linked to heart disease. They are sticking to this arbitrary and warped bogus claim that one can of diet soda a day will increase your risk of heart disease by 48 percent. Yeah.....right.

Here's a key passage in the piece, which may be of interest to anyone here:

The study's senior author, Dr. Vasan Ramachandran, emphasized the findings don't show diet sodas are a cause of increased heart disease risks. But he said they show a surprising link that must be studied.

Emphasis mine.

But here's the shocking kicker that's been largely ignored by the mainstream press:

"There's too much contradictory evidence that shows that diet beverages are healthier for you in terms of losing weight that I would not put any credence to the result on the diet (drinks)," said Barry Popkin, of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, who has called for cigarette-style surgeon general warnings about the negative health effects of soda.

Susan Neely, president of the American Beverage Association, said the notion that diet drinks are associated with bulging waistlines defies common sense.

"How can something with zero calories that's 99 percent water with a little flavoring in it ... cause weight gain?" she said.

The questions that ought to be asked here are: where are the authors of this "study" getting their information? What research methods did they employ to gather their "findings"? Isn't it more than likely that the government's medical lobbyists and their stooges were behind the fudging of these "findings"?

These anti-sugar zealots and Nazis, with the help of the medical corporatocrats and the entire medical establishment, are doing everything they can to outlaw dietary soft drinks. I bet anyone with a modicum of intelligence $100 that your Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke Plus will either be outlawed in the next several years or heavily taxed and regulated for the "high costs of health care."

What's pathetic about this is that too many people truly buy into this malarkey and never question the veracity of these findings or any other findings of any study, whenever they are published and reported by Big Media a.k.a. the government media. Too many Americans take what these studies say for granted and swallow this medical garbage hook, line, and sinker. They accept this nonsense at face value, without taking into account that the creators of these studies are the recipients of federal subsidies (a.k.a. taxpayer money) at the expense of taxpayers.

Anyone with a brain should know that drinking a can of diet soda more than once a day is particuarly not good for them. The best way to lose weight is a well-balanced diet, exercise, and drinking plenty of water (best to have vitamins in them). There are no short cuts when it comes to controlling one's health and weight reduction.

Libertarians, free marketeers, anarcho-capitalists, paleolibertarians, and other advocates of liberty will be wise to ignore the advice dispensed by these medical whackjobs, health groups, and medical corporatocrats.

The federal minimum wage begins hiking for the first time in a decade today, boosting from $5.15 an hour (the wage set by Clinton and his congressional cronies in 1996) to $5.85 an hour (one of three hikes to be raised each summer until 2009). After three hikes, it'll be officially at $7.25 an hour.

Thanks goes to Herr Bush who signed the wage edict into law last May. Obviously, the Republicans caved into the demands of the Democrats for fear of being viewed as "heartless" and "unsympathetic to the poor." But then again, the GOP supports minimum wage edicts as long as they are crafted in their favor.

Wait until the unemployment rate starts to rise again. By then, the collectivistic leftists and rightists on both sides of the aisle will blame the market for "market failure" as they usually do.

Federal agents raided two offices in Dearborn (which is in Wayne County, right under where I live) today, acting on the suspicion that they had terrorist ties to Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). These offices, which were owned by two charitable groups (Goodwill Charitable Organizations and Al-Mabarrat Charitable Organization), were cleaned out by the FBI, IRS, and the Secret Service, who were seen to be hauling away files and placing them into a van outside.

Here's an excerpt of the Detroit Free Press article, which covered it by the way:

Federal agents are raiding today the Dearborn offices of two charities suspected of having ties to terrorist groups in the Middle East.

A Dearborn police officer guarded the entrance to the office of the Goodwill Charitable Organization, a fund-raising office established by the Martyrs Foundation in Dearborn, on Warren Avenue, tucked between a grocery store and an import store.

The charity is not affiliated with Goodwill Industries, said Christine Bragale, spokeswoman for Goodwill Industries International.

Goodwill Industries International has sent the Muslim charity a letter in the past to get it to stop using the Goodwill name, Bragale said.

In Dearborn, several uniformed and plainclothes law enforcement officials shuttled in and out of the office, while bystanders and neighbors stood by watching.

The Treasury said in a news release that it "targeted Hizballah's support network by designating the Iran-based Martyrs Foundation, including its U.S. branch, and the finance firm Al-Qard al-Hassan."

The government also has frozen the assets of the Goodwill Charitable Organization, according to the news release.

"We will continue to target those who form the financial backbone of Hizballah, Hamas, PIJ and other terrorist groups that are attempting to destabilize Lebanon and target innocent civilians," said Stuart Levey, under secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, in the news release. "We will not allow organizations that support terrorism to raise money in the United States or to evade our measures and continue to operate simply by changing their names."

A search warrant was executed at the Goodwill Charitable Organization office, according to Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

According to the Treasury, the Martyrs Foundation "channels financial support from Iran to several terrorist organizations’’ including “Hizballah, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)."

Federal agents are also raiding the Al-Mabarrat Charitable Organization, which has a Dearborn office on Schaefer Road, north of Warren Avenue.

Agents with the FBI, IRS, and the U.S. Secret Service were seen hauling away files and placing them into a van outside the office. Al-Mabarrat, whose headquarters is based in Lebanon, has held fund-raisers in metro Detroit in recent years.

The anti-smoking Nazis have won Round One in their fight to outlaw smoking in public in my home state of Michigan. According to today's online edition of the Detroit Free Press, an anti-smoking bill passed in the Michigan Legislature's State House Committee by a vote of 12-4. Interestingly enough, the bill is faced with massive opposition from many bar, restaurant, and casino owners from all over the state.

One of the collectivists in the State House Committee -- Committee Chairman Rep. Andrew Meisner, D-Royal Oak, -- claims that this bill, which was in fact pushed by "health and consumer organizations, will "put Michigan in the forefront of cultural change on attitudes toward smoking," which is something that these collectivists claim the state needs to discard "its aging, smokestack reputation."

A key passage in the article says in part:

The bill approved today contains exemptions for existing tobacconists and cigar bars, where Meisner said owners have invested in “tobacco infrastructure.”

Interesting. The bill, if it were pass in the House and the Senate and signed into law by Governor Granholm in its current form, will outlaw smoking in workplaces all over the state, including bars, restaurants, and casinos, but tabacconists and cigar bars are excluded from the measure.

I wonder which "health and consumer organizations" in my state lobbied for this bill and how much they were paid to get it on the legislative table.

The Wall Street Journal's top Bush brown noser John Fund, who has thumbed his nose at Ron Paul in the past, writes in part today:

While Dr. Paul isn't about to win any GOP primaries this year, he is in solid political shape back home. He has won election six times from his Texas district since 1996. Dr. Broun could have similar electoral success if he sticks by the principles that got him elected and patiently explains to voters his reasons for doing so.

Could it be that the Neo-Cons and their collectivistic, social engineering-loving mouthpieces are finally vexed at the massive popularity of Paul's campaign? Is it possible that they are finally sweating over Ron's political viability on the campaign radar?

While at the Young Republican national convention during the July 4th celebrations we had 37 people with signs for Ron Paul.

NONE of the "brand X" Republicans had anybody with signs. Drivers who honked, waived, gave us up were 20-25% of the traffic. We calculated 1,000 cars per hour. There were four negatives: three anti-Pauline, one pro-Kucinich.

One of the media there interviewed me and I found myself explaining my support for Dr. Paul. It was an epiphany for me.

What has inspired me about Ron Paul is that he does appeal to the "better angels" in us. Of all the candidates running he is the one who most resembles Ronald Reagan's approach to political discourse.

I don't always have that transcendent quality. Ron Paul inspired me to try to appeal to the better and not attack those who I find myself in opposition with.

Of all the good Ron's race is doing, the elevating of the discourse, tone and approach may be, all by itself, the most worthwhile achievement.

Seems Ron Paul is doing well in the Iowa caucus. John McCain has had his troubles in the nomination fight & his staff in Iowa resigned. Including, Mr. Failure [sp?] who denied Dr. Paul a place in the forum arranged by Iowan's for Tax Relief!

But there is more: Mitt Romney isn't getting a lot of traction for his cash. His poll numbers are not in line with his fundraising. And now we hear that he is dropping the Iowa caucus.

Blogs friendly to the brand X candidates are already lampooning the Iowa caucus.

Why? Because Dr. Paul is doing well with the grassroots of the GOP who are starving for an honest leader to run for the nomination.

So note the denigration of Iowa for Dr. Paul is doing so well therein.

About a week and a half ago, on July 11, Ron Paul made another appearance on Tucker Carlson's MSNBC's show Tucker, in which Paul talks about his campaign progress, specifically the fact that he has earned more campaign donations from the "armed services" than Vietnam Vet and "Big 3" candidate John McCain. Interestingly enough, Ron's campaign donations have soared upwards by at least 400 percent in his Quarter 2 fundraising.

When one hears something like this, one cares to wonder what McCain is really thinking at a time like this.

Nevertheless, Ron is doing fantastic with his campaign. It just shows how strong and vibrant his Internet grassroots presidential campaign truly is, compared to the top-tiered candidates' campaigns on the GOP ticket (Giuliani, Romney, and McCain to be specific).

About Me

Pro-Liberty Poems

Let Liberty Ringby Teresa A. Bridges-Kemp

Let liberty ringThroughout this great landLet liberty ringIt’s time for the people to make a standLet liberty ringLet our voices ring clear and trueLet liberty ringOur freedoms are up to me and youLet liberty ringLike our forefathers wrote aboutLet liberty ringLet it give its mighty shoutTo allow liberty to be a realityWe must wake up and standFor all that we know and believeWe the people are the ones who have control of this landAnd our own sweet Liberty!

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A Foreign Policy of Non-interventism Quotes

"Peace, honest friendship, and commerce with all nations; entangling alliances with none." -- 3rd President Thomas Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

"But she does not go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy." - Sec. of State John Quincy Adams in reference to America to the Congress, July 4, 1821.

"War is the health of the state." - Randolph Bourne, a progressive writer whose quote happens to be the title of his unfinished essay which he never completed at the time of his death in 1918.

LLR News Tips?

Do you have any news tips that you have for me and my bloggers to discuss on LLR? Do you know of any other political blogs that I and my bloggers can analyze, dissect, and criticize? Do you know of libertarian articles and op-eds that can be publicized on the site?

If anyone has such news tips that I haven't discovered, whether it's political, financial, legal, or cultural for me and my bloggers to post on LLR, please email it to me and my bloggers here at LLR. My email is ToddAndrewBarnett@gmail.com. If you do, my bloggers and I will credit you with a hat tip for it.

Thank you so much for your support. It's greatly appreciated.

Todd Andrew BarnettFounder and Publisher ofLet Liberty Ring

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Words of Wisdom from LLR Publisher and Editor Todd Andrew Barnett

"A society that embraces the conventional wisdom saying that government is the be-all and end-all to every problem in the world is a society that embraces tyranny, violence, theft, and the initiation of force against our neighbors." -- on the American people's support of the state.

"A society operating under the paradigm of a true unrestricted free market and without a state is the society that best achieves liberty." -- on what human liberty should mean to American society and the entire world.

Pro-Liberty Quotes

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." -- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to William S. Smith, November 13, 1787